Hispanic Linguistics

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico offers the degrees of M.A. and Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics. The department offers courses in all aspects of Hispanic linguistics with emphasis on data-oriented and usage-based studies of Spanish, as well as on the Spanish of the Southwest. Graduate students in Hispanic linguistics can take advantage of unique collections representing the language and literature of New Mexico and the Southwest, historical documents covering the entire Spanish colonial period, and the unique linguistic environment of New Mexico, where several varieties of Spanish co-exist and richly interact with English and several Native American languages. One of the projects being undertaken by faculty in the Department is the linguistic atlas of New Mexico and Southern Colorado, which proves to be one of the most detailed and far reaching of its kind. The data collected for this project provide a key resource of natural data for students to work with. The University of New Mexico ranks high nationally among doctoral programs that graduate Ph.D. candidates in Hispanic linguistics. The large lower division programs in Spanish as a Second Language (SSL) and Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) affords graduate students ample opportunities in course development and experience supervising lower division courses.

• M.A. In Hispanic Linguistics (pp. 31-34)



• Ph. D. in Hispanic Linguistics (pp. 47-60 )

Linguistics Faculty in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

• Alejandra Balestra Professor of Historical Sociolinguistics, Language and Gender, Spanish Phonology

• Garland D. Bills (Emeritus) Professor of Linguistics and Spanish and Portuguese, Sociolinguistics, Southwest Spanish-English bilingualism, Quechua
• María Dolores Gonzales Professor of Spanish of the Southwest, Methodology for Spanish as a Heritage Language, Language and GGender
• Rena Torres-Cacoullos Professor of Language Variation and Change, Grammaticization, Language Contact.
• Catherine Travis Professor of Functional Syntax, Discourse Analysis, Semantics, Hispanic Linguistics
• Neddy A. Vigil Professor of Southwest Spanish, Portuguese linguistics, Medieval Lyric

Linguistics Faculty in Associated UNM Departments

• Melissa Axelrod, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics. Native American Languages, Morphosyntax, Semantics, Sociolinguistics.
• Joan Bybee, Professor, Department of Linguistics. Usage-based Phonology, Frequency Effects in Phonology, Morphology & Syntax, Typology and Universals, Language Change, and Grammaticization.
• Lois Meyer, Associate Professor, Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies. Second Language Acquisition, Bilingualism and Bilingual Education; Teacher Preparation and Curriculum Development for Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms; Language Policy in Mexico and the U.S.; the Ethnography of Indigenous Bilingual Education in Oaxaca, Mexico.
• Caroline Smith, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics. Phonetics: articulatory timing, the dynamics of speech production, durational aspects of prosody; Articulatory Phonology; Phonetics and phonology of French; Text-to-speech synthesis.

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